A HISTORY OF METABOLISM 75 



calories, or approximately the same diet as had been estimated by PLayfair 

 in 1805 (see p. TS). The unit of :,000 calorics was adopted as the 

 requirement of energy for the average adult male citizen when the Inter- 

 allied Scientific Food Commission met in Paris at the end of March, 1018, 

 to determine standards for the provisioning of a population of 225,000,000 

 people. The battleground around the 11 S gin. of protein has been active 

 for forty years, with no greater result than the well-defined impression that 

 those who take that quantity of protein have a greater virility than those 

 to whom it is denied. 



In the laboratory Voit was always enthusiastic. A new discovery was 

 the cause of joy. The figures to be obtained excited his curiosity, he 

 would say, or the results were most interesting, most important. The 

 new method was extraordinarily accurate and the expectations therefrom 

 fascinating. 



One day I burned my hand with ether in the laboratory. Some one 

 went for some coca in to relieve the pain, for which I offered to pay. 

 Money was refused. I had done so much for the State that the State 

 could well afford to pay. It was a new conception to me of a fundamental 

 relation of experimental laboratory work to the welfare of the State. 



I look back upon my days in Munich with gratitude and to the 

 memory of Voit with respect and veneration. 



Of those who were educated in the atmosphere of the Munich school 

 of Voit, Friedrich von Miiller is preeminent among physicians as the 

 leading internist of his time. And Rubner was the first to solve the 

 problem initiated by Lavoisier, of demonstrating that the law of the 

 conservation of energy held true for the animal organism. 



Max Rubner (1854- ). While still in Voit's laboratory as first 



assistant Rubner (d ) determined the calorific value of urine and feces un- 

 der different dietary conditions and laid the foundations for the computa- 

 tions involved in modern animal calorimetry (1885). Rubner applied the 

 knowledge he had won to the calculation of the heat production in man 

 and in many animals of different species. He (e) evolved the law of sur- 

 face area, that the heat value of the metabolism of the resting individual is 

 proportional to the area of the body surface. This law had been previously 

 indicated in the writings of Regnault and Reiset, as has been shown 

 (p. 4:j). His first publication regarding this was in 1883. A good 

 review of the literature on this subject is given by Benedict (z 1019). 



Voit had constructed a calorimeter for measuring the heat production 

 of man and extensive and laborious experiments were carried out with it 

 during the years 1860, 'TO, '71, '74 and 1884. The mass of material 

 was never published on account of the imperfection of the apparatus. 



Rubner (e), in 1801, working in his own laboratory at Marburg, vir- 

 tually with his own hands and with a very small allowance of money, made 

 a calorimeter which accurately measured the heat production of an animal. 



